Oregon Legal Research Blog
Justice Bedsworth welcomes you to February 2009, via the heat of August 2008 (LOL!):
MCLEmentary: “Beds has to forego a forgettable knowledge seminar.”, by Justice William W. Bedsworth:
Excerpt: “The National Judicial College is located in Reno, Nevada. I don’t know why. I always assumed that is where the founders’ wagon train ran out of food and water.
Whatever the reason for the location, it’s problematic. Say what you will about Reno, it is geographically undesirable for the vast majority of judges. The vast majority of judges, like the vast majority of everything else, is not in northern Nevada.
They have, what, nine judges in northern Nevada? Everybody else in America has to hop a plane, rent a car, hire a stagecoach, whatever, to get to Reno. Putting the National Judicial College in Reno was like putting the Mexican embassy in Milwaukee.
So they’ve always had to work very hard to get judges to attend their programs – a problem made especially exasperating by the fact California, which has more judges than gas stations, and is right across Donner Summit from the College,(1) has never taken full advantage of the proximity of this resource. California has enough judges to run its own continuing education programs, so the NJC has never been able to tap into the judicial mother lode that runs along the Sierras, just the other side of Truckee….
…
So I polished up my blackjack technique, re-read the Fourth Amendment, and hightailed it off to Reno. It was August. It was like spending a week in a hairdryer. Reno in August is the world’s largest outdoor convection oven. Nobody missed a class; we were all afraid if we left the building before sundown, we’d combust.” (read full essay)
Previous Bedsworth tales of woe and law can be found at May it Please the Court.